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I have recently discovered (a bit too late) that Western Digital Green hard drives have a serious issue when used in Linux as a main drive or a NAS drive. The problem can also occur in certain situations in windows too. The problem is due to a feature called intellipark. Which parks the heads on the drive after 8secs of drive inactivity.

Many Linux installations write to the file system a few times a minute in the background (eg. writing logs). As a result, there may be 100 or more load cycles per hour, and the load cycle rating may be exceeded in less than a year. This problem also makes the drives very unresponsive and makes your system feel slow as the heads need to be unparked when you try and load something.

My friend has killed two 1TB Green drives on his XBMC media box in 4years. The 500GB drive in my partners machine is in deep trouble as the load_cycle count is at 1991353 after a power_on_hours of 29549hrs. Compare that to my WD Black 1TB which has a load_cycle count of 721 after 13579hrs.

Now Western Digitals specsheet says that the drives are good for 300,000 Load/unload cycles, so this is a pretty big deal.

How to check/evaluate your WD Green Drive.

If you have a Western Digital Green drive, please check your SMART information before it’s too late. To do this you will need to install the package called smartmontools :

sudo pacman -S smartmontools (Arch / Manjaro)

sudo apt-get install smartmontools (Ubuntu / Mint)

Now check like this changing sda to whatever your Green drive is. (Use lsblk in terminal or gparted or i-nex or something to work out which drive it is.):

sudo smartctl -A /dev/sda | grep “^193”

193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 253 253
000 Old_age Always - 199135

If the Load cycle count exceeds a few thousand, you’re affected by the idle3 timer problem.

Here is how the output should look when this isn’t a problem:

sudo smartctl -A /dev/sdb | grep “^193”

193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 200 200
000 Old_age Always - 721

This is how we solve the problem.

Ok so you have the problem and want to fix it. Western digital have made a DOS utility to fix it if you ask them for it. Or can find it. Its called wdidle3.exe

But we arn’t going to use that. Instead we are going to use a Linux unnofficial alternative called idle3-tools. It is already packaged in Manjaro so no need to compile it. but here is the source [2]

Install idle3-tools with pamac or octopi or like this in the terminal:

sudo pacman -S idle3-tools (Arch / Manjaro)

sudo apt-get install idle3-tools (Ubuntu / Mint)

Now check what your drives timer is currently set as. (Replace sda if needed with your own drive.):

sudo idle3ctl -g /dev/sda

It will likely say it’s set to 80 [8sec]

Now really we want to just disable the timer altogether like it is on a black drive, and just let our systems power management handle the drive. If you want to just increase the time, then goto [3] and read the instructions.

To disable the timer (Replace sda if needed with your own drive):

sudo idle3ctl -d /dev/sda

Next step is to shutdown and power off your computer. Rebooting isn’t enough! You need to power off, so the drive will turn on with the new settings.

Now check again:

sudo idle3ctl -g /dev/sda

and it should say disabled.

Optional step.

Remove idle3-tools and smartmontools with octopi or pamac or in a terminal:

sudo pacman -R idle3-tools smartmontools (Arch / Manjaro)

sudo apt-get purge idle3-tools smartmontools (Ubuntu / Mint)

That’s it! All done. You can now enjoy the reliability and speed from the WD Green drive that you expected to have when you bought it.

Thank you to Skully for wanting me to post this important piece of information. I had this issue with a 500GB Western Digital Green drive, that failed on me not to long ago. Wish i had talked to him about it much earlier..haha

Ok, so for anyone who has done this in the past when it worked with no problems, should remember how it was possible to install. The third CD of the physical UT2003 disk had a linux_installer.sh file. All you had to do was copy that file to your computer, “chmod +x linux_installer.sh“, then just run it like so “./linux_installer.sh“.

Well now days the installer will give you a few errors when trying to execute it.

1.) The first of course after copying the file from Disk 3 to your computer, is to make it excutable. so open a terminal and navigate to where you copied the linux_installer.sh file, then do the following.

“chmod +x linux_installer.sh”

Now if you were to just run it like so “./linux_installer.sh“, you will most likely get a error output like i am getting.

Copying to a temporary location…Verifying archive integrity…tail: cannot open ‘+266’ for reading: No such file or directoryError in checksums: 3981352260 is different from 3043856338

You need to export posix2 version to something else. So in your terminal do the following.

export _POSIX2_VERSION=199209

Then if you run it again, depending if you are on a 64bit version or a 32bit version, it may either load up or not. I am running Arch Linux 64bit, so i got the following error.

Copying to a temporary location…Verifying archive integrity… All good.Uncompressing Unreal Tournament 2003 for GNU/Linux 2107…………………………………………………………….This installation doesn’t support glibc-2.1 on Linux / x86_64(tried to run setup)Fatal error, no tech support email configured in this setupThe setup program seems to have failed on x86_64/glibc-2.1

Fatal error, no tech support email configured in this setupThe program returned an error code (1)

It is complaining about my system being installed on a 64 bit version of linux, and giving me another error about glibc-2.1. So in order to get past this there are two more steps. First enter a new export to take care of the glibc2.1 problem.

export SETUP_LIBC=glibc-2.1

Then to get past the error about being on 64bit, run your installer command like so.

“linux32 ./linux_installer.sh”

This should bring up the installer window for UT2003, and then all you have to do is follow the steps throughout the installation process.

Also note that if you close your terminal, you will have to do your two exports again before running the installer again.

If you have any questions or issues, please let me know!

Thank you!

-Orkultus-

PS. Big thanks to Skully on steam for helping me figure this out as well!

EDIT: Ok i was having problems with the installer being able to read the cd’s when it asked me to swap them out. So what i did was took every file from the cdrom disks and copied them into a folder on my desktop called “ut2003”, and ran the installer from in there.

In order for the installer to read all the disks from within that folder i had to do

“export SETUP_CDROM=/home/chuck/Desktop/ut2003” <— Just replace the SETUP_CDROM= location to where your ut2003 files are in the folder you just created. It should work with no problems after that.

EDIT AGAIN: For a issue about not having sound for 64bit systems…. you must copy /usr/lib32/libopenal.so to the system folder of the installed game, and rename it to openal.so. Or make a simlink

So my work was cleaning out a ton of old computers. There had to be like at least 10 pentium 4 desktops with like 256mb ram. A few Celeron desktops with like a gig of ram, but the company president came up to me and asked me if i wanted a few of the old servers. I was like “YES!”. So i went in the back, and he had these two HUGE, heavy ass servers. One was a Dell Poweredge 2600 (Doesn’t Work), and a Dell Poweredge 2900 (Currently running Peppermint OS Four under my desk).

The Dell 2600, doesn’t have any hardrives, but it does have some ancient stuff in it. It has a cd-rom / 3 1/4 inch floppy drive combo..which i though was like .. WOAH. But the thing that brings back memories is the Tape Drive, that is right underneath of it. I haven’t seen one of those in years..haha. So i think i will just use the 2600 as parts, or take it apart for something to do. Then toss it.

The Dell Poweredge 2900, works great! Although the damn thing feels like its over 100lbs. IT IS HEAVY. So here are the specs of it.

CPU/S: Two Xenon Dual Core processors @ 2.55Ghz

RAM: 8GB DDR2

DVD Drive: 16X (thing is slow as hell)

Hardrives: (These things are fast)

1.) 150GB 10k RPM scuzzy

2.) 150GB 10k RPM scuzzy

3.) 150GB 10k RPM scuzzy

4.) 300GB 10k RPM scuzzy

Video Card: AMD ES1000 16mb (Pretty much just makes it possible to see the desktop)

Right now, i dont have the hard drives raided, but i am running peppermint on the 300GB, and i plan on enabling the others as standard partitions. I am currently using it for a media server, and hopefully i will start another private minecraft server, and possibly a PoP3 server.

I had heard that i could even put in a old 512mb PCI express 1.0 card (8x), and play games on it. I dont have one of those cards anymore, and i dont think i really want to buy one, just to be able to do that. Although i am sure this server could play some pretty cool games. Right now it will just be a media server to stream to my PS3 in the living room. I was actually shocked that its alot quieter than my desktop computer is..haha.

Here is a picture of it.

The Poweredge 2900 is on the left.

Just thought i would share that with you! If i ever decide to do some testing with it, i will let you know. Mostly hardware related anyway. Linux seemed to install just fine on it.

Well now; a very kind developer from Nemesys Games, has sent me a few steam keys to give away on my blog! These keys are for a copy of Fortix 2. Which works on Linux! So i am here to deliver them all to you! Now this is first come first serve, and i only have this many.

What is it with these humble bundles that come out one after another that only support windows.. It is starting to piss me off. Why cant they make a slider on the payment page that says “Donate money to developers to make a linux / mac port”. You know how much money they would get?? enough to build a new AAA game im sure. Would be well enough to pay for a port. I def think this should be on their page.

For my situation, and possibly for many others…all my friends get these games, play the hell out of em, and get board by the time i get a linux version. That is if they even eventually get a Linux version of a game seen on Humble Bundle. Of course i could just stop complaining and shackle myself down to a Windoze OS..but that is a sign of weakness. We will win this battle..we just have to keep fighting.

So i at random, was greeted by my package manager today with a duplicate source issue. This thing has been driving me crazy.. i keep throwing solutions at it, and it goes right back to it. SO..we are going to figure this out right quick!

So guys, i am still alive and around. I haven’t forgotten about you, or the blog. I have just picked up another job. So i have been currently working Mon-Fri… 6:30 AM – 3:00PM at my first job, and then 4:30PM – 8:30PM (Sometimes to Midnight). I hardly get a chance to get on my computer. I usually just go straight to bed cause i am so exhausted. I just wanted to let you know what has been going on with me. This second job is greatly helping me out. I went from not having any money after bills, to about 300 dollars a week as spending cash. Its been alot of hard work, but its worth it. I will try my best to post some more Linux Fix it’s when i can. For now, hang in there guys, and thank you so much for supporting my blog by linking it to other sites. The more people we can help the better!